The Epic Lord of the Rings (Guest: Joseph Pearce)

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign. [00:00:15] Speaker B: So Joseph, the Lord of the Rings is on my mind right now. I am currently going through the entire trilogy with my youngest children. I've read it to all my kids, but my youngest, my 10 year old has not yet heard it so she's getting it for the first time. And then my 14 and 16 year olds are just sitting in listening as well because why wouldn't you? And of course now is the 25th anniversary of the movies and so they're re releasing the movies. You wrote an article for Crisis about Lord of the Rings. And so since Lord of the Rings is on my brain and my daughter, as I mentioned before we got on, is my 16 year old daughter is currently taking your class at homeschool connections on Lord of the Rings. And so I was like, I got to get the guy on himself. I, I gotta get the man, the myth, the legend. Joseph Pierce on to talk about Lord of the Rings. So welcome to the program. [00:01:03] Speaker A: Well, I think you might be the first person to call me a legend. Thank you, Eric. [00:01:08] Speaker B: You are a legend. You're a legend, definitely. So no, you've obviously you've written a lot about a lot of different literary works and things like that, but I know Lord of the Rings has a special place in your heart and I just wanted to talk about with you, I just want to start like when did you first read Lord of the Rings? And what was like your first impression when you first read it, but you [00:01:29] Speaker A: started with a question. Because this is one of the most embarrassing questions I've ever asked, especially if people didn't know nothing at all about my past. So I'm gonna have to take a. [00:01:36] Speaker B: Oh, I've read your biography. I know about it. [00:01:39] Speaker A: Okay, well I, I may have to take a one minute tangent because your, your viewers might not. But when people ask me when did I first read Lord of the Rings? The answer is during my second prison sentence. And when I say that, you know, in a Q A session after giving talk Lord of the Rings, everybody laughs because they think I'm joking and I'll say no. It was during my second prison sentence. So very, very briefly, I read a book published by Tan Books called Race with the Devil. My Journey from Racial Hatred to Rational Love. So I was a very bad. An angry young man and a radical in politics and white supremacist when I was up, when I was a kid. And for, for that I edited magazine. I was sentenced to prison for hate crimes. I suppose you call it publishing material deemed likely to incite racial hatred for editing that magazine. So I spent my 21st and 25th birthday in prison. So was when I was about 20, 24, 25 years old when I first read the Lord of the Rings. I'd always meant to read it, you know, but it's that thick. I just. You just held your, you know, one volume hardback edition up. It's a bit intimidating to look at. And so I kept thinking, well, I need to read that. A lot of my friends have read it. I've got to read it. I never got around to it. And you find yourself in a prison cell with lots of time in your hands. It's the perfect time to pick it up. So I read it and never looked back. And. And, you know, once I became a Catholic, this, obviously before my conversion, once I became a Catholic, I sort of rekindled my. My love affair with the Lord of the Rings and began to detect the. The deep Catholic resonances in it. And of course, then I discovered Cath Tolkien's herself a lifelong practicing Catholic. So that became the background from my first book on Tolkien, which was Talking man and Myth, which was published, I think in 1998, perhaps. Yeah, something like that. [00:03:24] Speaker B: I have this one Tolkien a Celebration that you edited, correct? Right. [00:03:28] Speaker A: So, yes, yeah, that was a byproduct of the other book. So the book, the book was called Talking man and Myth, A Literary Life. And that was a sort of a. It was a. Basically a biography of Tolkien with two or three chapters on the Catholic dimension of the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings and the Sil Meridian. But then when I was doing my research for that book, I kept coming across all these various wonderful essays that had either never been published or any published in obscure journals. And so I said to the publisher, could we bring out a companion volume Talking to Celebration with my editing these. These essays? And they agreed. So what you just held up was that if you like, byproduct of my first. My first biography of Tolkien. [00:04:06] Speaker B: So that's Tolkien of Celebration. But also, before we just jump into, I might as well just tell people you have a great book called Frodo's Journey, which is more specifically, we're going to talk about a lot of themes that are in this book. When did this come out? A few years ago. Right. [00:04:19] Speaker A: That was probably about 15 years ago, I'm guessing 2010, something like that. [00:04:23] Speaker B: 2015, it says. So about 10. [00:04:25] Speaker A: Only 10 years ago. Okay. Time flies. [00:04:28] Speaker B: Yes, exactly. [00:04:28] Speaker A: That's right. [00:04:29] Speaker B: So, but like, so when you first read, you weren't Catholic, you're In prison, when you were finished, did you just think, oh, this is a nice story, or did you kind of perceive at that time that it was more than that, that there was some message in there, or was it not until after you became Catholic that you really started to understand the messages? [00:04:47] Speaker A: That's a great question. One of the things I say about the Lord of the Rings is that everybody who reads it, irrespective of where they are on the spectrum from godlessness to saint, shall we say, wherever you read the Lord of the Rings, when you first read, you're nudged in the right direction so it meets you where you are and moves you towards Christ. That's, that's, that's the power of it, you know. So, yeah, you know, when I would not have picked up a book in those days that was a Catholic book or a Christian book, you wouldn't have got me to read it. So it was a non starter. But you read the Lord of the Rings, which is unintimidating, unthreatening, because it's not an overtly Christian book. But what you're getting, of course, is, is, is a Christian philosophical worldview. The understanding of ultimately of love as being, laying down your life for your friends. The idea of good and evil being objective and not, not relative. All of those, all of those things are, you're taking in consciously or subconsciously, subliminally, and at the end of it, you're a changed person. You know, I, I, I, I understood what a heroism was and that was a step towards understanding what holiness is. So, you know, so it moved me in the right direction. But of course, all the very deeper Catholic dimension was something that came later. [00:06:02] Speaker B: Yeah, we, I want to talk about a number of things related Lord of the Rings. I do want to get into the movies and your thoughts on them, but I want to start specifically about the book. So Tolkien wrote the Hobbit specifically to be a children's book, really. But the Lord of the Rings, which is a sequel to the Hobbit, it really, I mean, obviously young people read. I think I read. First time I read, I was maybe in seventh or eighth grade, and I'm reading it to my daughter, who's 10, and she's enjoying it, but it's not a children's book, really. What was Tolkien's? Do we know what kind of Tolkien's thought was, why he went from a children's book and then added a sequel that clearly was something much more complex and massive? [00:06:45] Speaker A: Yeah. One of the charming things about Lord of the Rings is That, that at some point, Tolkien became convinced that it was never going to be published or publishable because it wasn't what the publisher asked for. So the publisher asked for, you know, a sequel to the Hobbit, and of course, in some sense that's what it is. But because the Hobbit was a children's book, it was written at that level, pitched for children to read, offered, offered adults to read to their children. And then when he started writing the Lord of the Rings, it sort of grew up and it grew out of control and it turned into this huge myth. And at some point he thought, well, I'm going to carry on with this. But it's not what the publisher is expecting, and there's nothing out there in the marketplace. It's probably not going to be published or publishable. In actual fact, it was his friendship with C.S. lewis, largely because Tolkien said, if I had him in, Lewis was the great encourager. If I had him for CS Lewis, I might not have finished the Lord of the Rings. So, you know, Lewis, C.S. lewis and Tolkien Lewis were great friends, and certainly they, they had a catalytic friendship where each sort of inspired the others, working in, in various ways. That's a whole different topic for conversation, perhaps for another time. But, but, but, but the key thing here is the charming thing about Lord of the Rings. It's not being written for money, because at some point, Tolkien thinks it's not going to be published at all. And it becomes a labor of love. And so that's beautiful. Nothing mercenary about it. And of course, it becomes this huge success. But that wasn't what he thought he was writing when he was writing it, because he thought it was something so new, so different, so difficult, that probably it's going to be unpublishable. [00:08:27] Speaker B: It is funny. I, I, I think the last time I read it was a few years ago, maybe two or three years ago, before. Now I'm reading it to my kids. And it is funny reading it, particularly reading it to my kids. Now. I do notice at times I'm like this, I mean, like, I just got a point. They just had left Lothlorien, and he has a whole Elvish song in there that's in Elvish. And I just tell the kids, I'm like, guys, I'm going to skip this. I do not know how to pronounce Elvish. I don't know it. But, you know, just here it is. If you want to read it, you can. And it's just funny because imagine trying to pitch that to a Publisher, by the way, I'm going to have songs in a made up language that I made up. That's, that's completely a true language now. But like I. Nobody's gonna be able to read it and understand it, but I'm gonna put that in there too. So what do you think? [00:09:12] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean that's, that's, that's the beauty of the whole thing, you know. And I'm a bit disappointed that Eric, not only do you do not know Elvish, but you didn't actually sing it. You can't read it. [00:09:21] Speaker B: Okay, well, okay. [00:09:23] Speaker A: Your best Elvish, Elvish intonation, I will say. [00:09:27] Speaker B: Okay, so I am not a singer at all. And I have been somewhat mocked by my children when I try to sing. And so I've gotten a little skittish about it. But I will say there was a Dwarvish song when I think during Khazad Dum and. And I did do that one with like a low voice and kind of had a little chanting to it because I kind of feel like the Dwarvish songs are more of a. Like a deep chant or something like that. That's just how I picture it. So I did do that. The Elvish, though, I think is a little beyond my capabilities maybe if I get a good. [00:09:54] Speaker A: I think. I think the nearest thing to dwarfish in, in the Christian world is Old Church Slavonic. [00:10:00] Speaker B: Yes, yes. [00:10:01] Speaker A: That's how I kind of picture it, you know. Yeah. Sort of very low. [00:10:07] Speaker B: That's exactly how I picture it. Was something like a Russian Orthodox chant or something like that. There we go. So. So. Yes, so. But I just think that's interesting about that backstory about him not thinking it would actually be published because it allowed him to really just be free to write whatever he wanted to write. And I think that made it what it is because I think if he had been constrained, it has to be a kid's book or something like that. It just. It had no chance to be the classic that it was. [00:10:34] Speaker A: So, yeah, that's the whole point. That is the absolute charming thing about it. It was literally and literarily a labor of love. He was just writing what he wanted to write because he wanted to write it. And that's why it's the work of genius. If a publisher put a straight jacket on him creatively, and if he'd agreed to wear that straight jacket, it would have. It would have destroyed whatever we got. Would not be anywhere near as magnificent as what he actually delivered. [00:11:02] Speaker B: So I want you here. I know this is a subjective thing might be difficult to do. But I want you to rank Lord of the Rings and all works of fiction, not just like all work because you have read and studied and done a lot of this work in this area. So I'm just curious, where would you rank it? Like just on, on all fiction, actually. [00:11:21] Speaker A: Well, the first thing I would have to say is that we have to distinguish between objective and subjective, in other words, between best and favorite. So there'll be two different judgments if, if you want me to be objective and talk about it in terms of its objective merits. In terms of being, you know, in the ranking of the best, not the favorite. I would actually say first of all, there's, there's a difficulty with like, for like you can, you know, compare a sonnet by Shakespeare side by side with the Lord of the Rings. Not really, you know, they're not like for like. So first thing I would say is that the Lord of the Rings is not a novel. So it's, it needs to be seen alongside the Iliad and the Odyssey and the Aeneid and Beowulf and Dante's Divine Comedy and, and, and Milton's Paradise Lost. It's an epic and it needs to be seen as an epic, not as a novel. And all I would say about that, in terms of best, I think the Lord of the Rings, of course he's not writing in, not writing in blank verse or in tetsurima in Dante's rhyme scheme, which is obviously much more challenging. So that talk about best, I suppose that compromise it being, being able to be called the best. But to me it stands shoulder, the shoulder with those great epics I've just mentioned. I mean, in terms of best, Dante's Divine Comedy would be above the Lord of the Rings, but I, I, I, it we dro for me at least I think in terms of best, even it would be jostling for position with, with the Idiad, the Odyssey and the Ined. It's better as a work victory, I think, than Bewolf anyway, so it's up there in, in, in that epic genre amongst the best. As regards favorites of those epics I've just mentioned, you know, if I was, if I were, if I had to go to a desert island, if I, of those epics, I'd want to take two. It'd be Dante's Divine Comedy and, and the Lord of the Rings, let's put it that way. [00:13:18] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a good, that's a good choice. I think I would be very similar to that as well. And so just make sure people are clear about like epic versus novel. What would you call like Chronicles of Narnia? Would you put that just in a like serialized, not like a multi part novel really? [00:13:33] Speaker A: Yeah. There's another problem as well with children's fiction because it's obviously shorter. It's constrained by the genre of being children's fiction. So you know, is a children's work such as the line the Witch and the Wardrobe a novel? Again these are all things we could discuss about. But see it'd be difficult for instance to put the line in which the wardrobe. Besides Brothers Karamazov. Right. Because you know, they're so different because one is aimed at children with some really profound theology in it. As profound theology as you. As you get in. In the Brothers K. But, but they're not like for like again, so it's difficult. So you know, with me we've talked about the Chronicles Narnia. It's absolutely in terms of best up there. I, I mean I, I can't think of advertise children's literature. What's better except the Hobbit and that's arguable. Wind and Willows and that's arguable. You know, it's the Chronicles Nine Year as a whole are probably about as good as it gets, quite frankly. And so that with. With children's literature I can say quite simply that for me the best and the favorite are the same thing. Chronicles of Narnia. [00:14:50] Speaker B: Now one of the things about Lord of the Rings is that everybody wants to impart a message on it. And for example, I know in like the 1960s when it was very popular, it was very popular with like the counterculture and people have kind of taken it for their own. And of course him being Catholic and saying certain Catholic aspects of it, we Catholics look at it as kind of ours but like everybody seems to claim it as theirs. And so I just was kind of the. One of the. I think, I think one of the most difficult challenges I think for some people to understand is the book itself have no mention, explicit mention of God or any type of Christianity or anything like that. In fact, I remember Ian McKellen in an interview when he was, you know, he played Gandalf, of course in the movies. He mentioned how he. Because he's an atheist. He mentioned how he liked that like there was no God in. In the. In Middle Earth. Now so how is it that we get across. How do we get around saying it's this fundamentally Catholic work and it's all got all this Christian message when some people are like, no, it's like basically an atheist paradise because there's no religion in it. [00:15:57] Speaker A: Well, I, I'll get to see Ian McKellen in a moment and his misreading of the work because God is present even in the text. Not. You haven't got to sort of read in between the lines it's mentioned. Oh, I'll say it now and then we'll get on to the other aspects of it. When Gandalf, ironically played by, by Ian McCallum, says to, to Frodo that, that Bilbo was meant to find the ring and not by its maker. And that might be an encouraging thought. So there's a meaning and a purpose that's above the design of Salvon. Well, what on earth is that meaning and purpose if it's not divine? Not an accident. Because if it's an accident, something, you can't mean something to happen and you know, without in the absence of a will to mean it. So even on the purely philosophical level, it's quite clear that the, that the Divine Comedy is not an atheistic cosmos, it's a monotheistic cosmos. But to backtrack a bit, you know, so atheists read the Lord of the Rings as an atheist work and, you know, other people and, you know, Catholics claim it's Catholic. What's the difference? Well, the difference, most important thing is, and this is I insist upon, we have to look at reality, all reality, as far as possible, objectively. In other words, we don't, we don't subject reality to what we feel. We subject ourselves to what is. Right, that's, that's seeing reality objectively. Well, that seeing objectively has to also include the reading of literature. So what I say, obviously the perfect objective understanding of any work of literature is the divine understanding. Well, that's inaccessible to us at least, you know, for the most part. Right. But the next, the next authority below that, below the divine, that understands the work better than anybody else is the author. So I insist upon the authorial authority. The author is the authority. So it's not me that says the Lord of the Rings is a fundamentally religious and Catholic work. If it were, why take me seriously, is talking, and that's a direct quote from Tolkien. The Lord of the Rings is of course, a fundamentally religious and Catholic work. So Sir Ian McKellen needs to argue with the author if he's going to insist it's atheist because quite clearly not what Tolkien thought of it. And with all due Respect to Ian McKellen Tolkien knew the Lord of the Rings better than he did. [00:18:27] Speaker B: Yes, I think he probably did. So now one of the things I noticed that we have this idea of it having this Christian message and stuff like that. People have posited different characters in the book as Christ figures. You have Gandalf, potentially spoilers, by the way. When he dies, he rises. Hopefully you've already read it if you're watching this. Frodo obviously could be a Christ figure. Aragorn is the king. Return of King could be a Christ figure. Are any of them. Are one of them Christ figures? Any of them. All of them. Like. And was Tolkien trying to have a Christ figure or what's going on there when people talk about these different figures as Christ figures? [00:19:04] Speaker A: Well, first of all, that, that, that talk is much more subtle than, for instance, C.S. lewis. So, you know, in the Chronicles of Narnia, Aslan is always a figure of the Son of God. So a Christ figure in all seven stories at all times, whenever he's spoken about or whether he appears and speaks himself. There's nothing like that in talking. There are certain characters within the story that are. That literally are those characters literarily. They can also be seen as certain aspects of who they are as characters to be Christ figures. So we need, we need to back up a bit. First of all, I want to look at this on. Tolkien's a medievalist, in many ways, very inspired by medieval works of literature. And so, for instance, in Beowulf, the character of Beowulf in, in some sense is a. Is a Christ figure in that final part because of numerical signifiers. But he's never Christ, right. He's someone who reminds us of Christ. Dante is an everyman figure in, in Divine Comedy, but he's also Dante, right, the character in the story. So it's much more subtle. Now within the Lord of the Rings, the key thing is we have to work backwards and, and work out the. The Tolkien does again, what Dante does in the Divine Comedy. So Tolkien and Dante and, and Chaucer and the. The author of the Segue and the Green Knight, another great medieval story, they use dates from the liturgical year for the liturgical calendar as signifiers of a religious dimension that transcends the story. And, and if, like infuses it with. With, if you might even call it grace, but certainly with religious significance. So very quickly with Dante, the. The. The story begins on Holy Thursday. Dante descends into hell on Good Friday. He emerges in the light of the sun at the foot of Mount Purgatory on Easter Sunday morning, he ascends Mount Purgatory and into paradise during the Easter season. So Tolkien does the same thing. What he does, however, is have the ring destroyed on March 25th. And this is the key that unlocks everything else in the story, including who the Christ figures are and why. So the Ring Is tried on March 25, March 25 is. Is. Is a doubly important feast because it's obviously known most people as the Feast of the Annunciation, the date on which the Word becomes flesh, the date in which God becomes man, the Incarnation. But it's also, according to tradition, the historic date of the Crucifixion. Now, we don't ascribe a particular date to the Crucifixion because the Easter Triduum is a movable feast, right? There's not one day which is Good Friday, but the date of the Good Friday, Right? The date of the Christ's crucifixion in history happened on one particular day. And according to the tradition, that was March 25th. So Tolkien has the Ring destroyed on both the date on which God becomes man, so the Incarnation, the date in which. Which Christ dies for us, you take that, those two things together, the life and death of Christ, with, of course, the resurrection, you get our redemption. So Tolkien basically, in some sense, is. Is making a connection here. What's destroyed a master 23 fifth in history is the power of sin, the power of original sin in particular, and sin in general. What's destroyed on March 25th in the story the Lord of the Rings? It's the Ring. Right. And what is the. The Ring? The one ring to rule them all and in the darkness bind them. What is original sin? The one sin to rule them all, and. And in the darkness bind them, and the one sin and the one ring are destroyed exactly the same date. So this is the key, the theological key that gives that Catholic dimension to the whole work, including enabling us to see who the Christ figures are. [00:23:20] Speaker B: Yeah, that's what I was going to ask next. You already answered it, though, which is this idea of what does the Ring represent? Because some people have made it represent just like, you know, power or like, I've heard, like, you know, the Nazis and things like that. But really fundamentally, and I think you make the good point about the date particularly, it's really original sin, because, I mean, there's, I don't know, a human being alive who could read the Lord of the Rings and not understand the temptation of the Ring, because we experience it every day. The temptation to do, to do what St. Paul says in Romans 7 to do what we don't want to do. And that's what the ring does. And I think the figure of Gollum, I think is fascinating because there's something about Gollum that's just amazing because he doesn't actually redeem Gollum, but yet Gollum does. Good. I mean, that's what's amazing about it, is that because, you know, you see in some, most literature, they try to redeem a figure or something like that, but Gollum ends up. It's kind of. His end is kind of messy because in the end he does. He is the reason the ring was destroyed, yet the reason he did it wasn't like some altruistic way. And so how do you think we should interpret Gollum, like, you know, in understanding the overall message and like, also in our own lives, how to like, apply that in our own lives? [00:24:44] Speaker A: Yeah. So from what you've just said, there's the three things I want to respond to. The second or third relate directly to Gollum, but before that, the idea of the ring representing power. Then up to a point, the answer is yes, because pride and power, pride and the desire for self empowerment are very, very closely connected. When the, the. The Catholic historian Lord Acton famously said, power tends to corrupt. An absolute power tends to corrupt. Absolutely. So, yeah, but as long as we understand power in, in a Catholic theological context and its connection to the desire for self empowerment and to domineer and dominate others because of ultimately the sin of pride, then yes, absolutely. But as long as we don't. As long as we don't sort of somehow divorce power from theology, because Tolkien certainly doesn't. Now, as regards Gollum, two things about him. First of all, we see if the ring does represent sin is synonymous with sin, the power of sin. What we see in Gollum represented to us in a very graphic and I think very realistic way, you know, psychologically, Gollum is a perfect depiction of the shriveling and shrinking of, of a good soul into a shrunken wreck because of its addiction to sin. So it wants nothing but the sin. It doesn't even desire the good any longer because the sin is the only good as it sees it, that it's interested in. And so that shriveling and shrinking of the wrecked soul because it's addiction and slavery to sin, as St. Paul warns us, is seen in the character of Gollum. Now, the other aspect about Gollum's role in the climactic moment of Mount Doom. This is brilliant. Now this is. This is a moment in the story which you might find frustrating when we first read it because you know, we first. We want our heroes to, to be, to be the winners, right? I said, you know, so we want, we want Frodo having walked all that way, you know, dragging us with him for eight or nine hundred pages at this point we just want him to throw the ring, right? [00:26:58] Speaker B: Right. [00:26:59] Speaker A: To achieve the victory, to be the hero. And yet he's a miserable loser, right? He, he refuses. And we're angry with him and we're angry with. [00:27:08] Speaker B: I remember the first time I read as a kid, I was just like what, Wait, what, what's happening here? He's the good guy. What's he doing? I mean I was like in seventh grade or something, but I was, I was frust. And I was like, what are we doing here? [00:27:20] Speaker A: I think your experience is. Experience of everybody reading it for the first time because we don't want our heroes to fail, right? So we feel this sense of anti. Climax climax. We even feel a sense of betrayal on the part of Frodo, but also the part of talking because of course ultimately it's talking that makes Frodo be a failure, right? So, but then this brilliant thing happens. We don't see how brilliant is until perhaps later. But Gollum arrives on the scene. There's a struggle. He bites off Frodo's finger and falls in into, into the fire, the flames of Mount Doom and, and he and the ring are destroyed. And Middle Earth is saved, but not by Frodo, but by Gollum. It doesn't seem to make any sense. [00:28:02] Speaker B: But [00:28:05] Speaker A: again, Tolkie was the expert on Beowulf. The, the Beowulf is a parable about Pelagianism. I don't have time to about. It's not the time to talk about Beowulf. But, but Tolkien knew that. He translated the whole of Beowulf. He, he gave the seminal lecture and wrote the seminal paper the Monster Critics about Beowulf. Beowulf is about Pelagianism and what's plagianism? The sin of plagiarism. The heresy of Pelagianism is that we can get to heaven by the triumph of our own will. We don't need any help. We just listen to what Jesus says and we do it and we get to heaven. And so we don't need assistance, we don't need supernatural assistance. We don't need grace. If we don't need grace, we don't need the church, we don't need the sacraments. We Just do it ourselves, right? That's the heresy of plagianism. Well if the ring is synonymous with sin, Frodo can't defeat it himself. He does need supernatural assistance. He does need grace. But then you think, hang on for a second Gollum race, I mean apart from alliterating, what's. What on earth do they have in common, you know. But then you realize at the beginning of the story, towards the beginning Frodo says I wish, speaking of Gollum, I wish Uncle Bilbo had destroyed that miserable creature. It's a pity that he didn't. And Gandalf says pity. It was pity that saved his hand. And he says I think Gollum still has a role to play in the story. And then later on when Frodo has a chance to have Gollum destroyed he says now I do see him, I do pity him. And he stays the hand of the archers that gonna kill Gollum. And later on Sam also has the opportunity to kill Gollum and pities him. So on three separate occasions, three separate hobbits, Bilbo, Frodo and Sam have passed the most difficult test that we're all given the greatest. One of the different, most difficult commandment our Lord gives us is to. Is to love our enemy, right? And if, if Bilbo or Frodo or Sam had failed to love their enemy and killed Gollum he would not have been there at the key moment. So providentially, right? This is the reward for their earlier acts of virtue and, and their deliverance by the power of God acting providentially through Gollum who is there because that he's been spared earlier in the story. It's brilliant. [00:30:40] Speaker B: Yeah, it really is. When you really get down into it, you're like okay, this, this, it does all kind of. It's a thoroughly Catholic work I would say. I wonder who would say that too. But I think I want to switch now a little bit though to the political message, so to speak. Now this is something you definitely see people try to insert whatever political view they hold they insert into Lord of the Rings and make it their own and. But yet there is at least cultural, societal, I'd even say political message in there in that. And I'm seeing it more and more as I get older. I'm actually writing now on artificial intelligence and I was just reading about the impact society, how technology has changed so that. And you do the point where you just want to live in the. I mean that's just the thought. But was Tolkien though he had views like Chester Economic kind of political idea. How do we see that in Lord of the Rings, particularly like, you know, I saw him on, in the industry and you see that in the movies a good deal too. And compared to the Shire and Sauron and in Gondor, how is that all kind of, how can we apply that, so to speak, to like our political world? [00:32:03] Speaker A: Yeah, that, that, that, that's a great question. So again, Tolkien would insist that the Lord of the Rings needs to be read theologically first and foremost, which is why it's fundamentally religious and Catholic. But of course, the Catholic Church does have its social teaching which basically understands political philosophy in the light of Catholic theology and Catholic philosophy. And so Tolkien basically was in harmony with the Church's social teaching, with ideas such as subsidiarity and solidarity, as taught by leo XIII in 1891, by Pius XI 1931, and by, of course, Chesterton and Bellot, both of whom were considerable influences upon, upon the young J.R.R. tolkien. So, you know, that I think that we will see, we, we see that if we're looking for what political philosophy, and I like to use the word political philosophy because if you talk about politics, it becomes sort of whatever, whatever, whatever party is standing for government and whatever politicians spouting his mouth off. We have to see politics philosophically through the eye, you know, from the perspective of the love of wisdom. So, but on, in terms of political philosophy, the Lord of the Rings reflects the Catholic Church's social teaching. So yes, localism, that the shire is, is good and true and beautiful and worth defending. The small is beautiful and the small is worth defending. Beginning ultimately with the hobbit hole, with the family. So this, and these ideas of capitalism and socialism, so that. I remember getting a discussion with someone who claimed that the, the, the Lord of the Rings was capitalist because no, Sharky in the Scouring of the Shire at the, towards the end of the book is a socialist in. Yes, in some sense he is. But the point is that when, when they, when they get rid of Sharky, when they get rid of the socialism, do they say, well, thanks be to God for these glorious industrial factories that can now make things, things much more efficiently and effectively than the agrarian lifestyle we have did before it. No, they pull the factories down, right? So it's not just socialism, it's also industrialism in this capitalist guys as well, which is, which is seen as the enemy. What we need to get back to is a healthier, more agrarian, more, more agriculturally sustainable and more psychologically and politically sustainable way of doing things. And so that's localism. It's basically, it's empowering the local community, it's empowering families and it's taking power away from Mordor, isengard and Washington D.C. [00:34:50] Speaker B: and I know that Tolkien had kind of some anarchist leadings, not in the radical anarchists of blowing up, building that, but just in a very limited government sort of way. And I'd also say in Lord of the Rings, I mean, it's said multiple times a shire wouldn't still exist if there weren't people protecting it. And so you need, and then of course, once Aragorn becomes the king, and so you need the power of the King of Gondor or else that localism in the Shire would be, would, would not exist anymore because evil could, could take over. How does that, how does Tolkien or even, how do you, how do you balance that between this localism and kind of small government? You see, because like in the Shire, there's almost no government at all. I mean it is, you know, there's a mayor who's almost a figurehead and that's it. But yet you still, you have a king once Aragorn returns and you have Gondor, that's protecting the Shire from, from getting attacked. [00:35:42] Speaker A: Yeah, well, the first thing is that Tolkien certainly once, possibly twice, but certainly once describes himself as an anarchist of sorts. And he qualifies it by saying not, not the bomb throwing type. I think that's unfortunate because anarchy as generally speaking is nihilistic. It doesn't believe in power because that ultimately doesn't believe in anything. And that certainly isn't the case with Tolkien, that the key thing is that there is a government in the Shire and the government in the Shire is self government. Right. In other words, that it's virtue. And the great Alexander Solzhenitsyn talks about self limitation. So self limitation is something which we have to practice ourselves, but also governments have to practice self limitation. In other words, humility, responsibility, virtue. If you don't want to be governed by, by Sauron or by the federal government and by Big Brother, you have to be able to govern yourselves. It's not the absence of government, it's self government. So self government as regards beginning with yourself and, and being virtuous, having a virtuous family through, through the love of husband and wife and children, having a virtuous local community, right, where, where the families are getting together and communing with each other to, to, to instill that, that culture of virtue with, within the local society. Of course, the further out you get, the more divorced you are from any real control. And, and that's the problem. Now, as regards kingship, obviously, as Catholics, we are monarchists, right? We have no choice because we know Christ is the king, the Blessed Virgin is the Queen of Heaven. There's a hierarchy of saints. I certainly don't expect to be, you know, equal with the Blessed Virgin or equal Theresa of Avila or Thomas Aquinas when I die. I expect to have my, if I get there, please God, that I will have my place somewhere in the hierarchy, towards the bottom. And I would be absolutely delighted. [00:37:44] Speaker B: So we'll be happy together at the bottom, Joseph. [00:37:47] Speaker A: Exactly. We'll be at that lowest level, which, the lowest level of, of the presence of God. I mean, what would be one. But, so there's a hierarchy and this is what the Church means by solidarity. But the king also has to respect subsidiarity. The king has no right to interfere in the family life or the village life. His, his. His authority is to oversee things that is for the, is in terms of solidarity, for the common good that can't be handled by, at the local level. But everything that can be handled at local level should be and must be and has nothing to do with the king. [00:38:32] Speaker B: Yeah, and you notice that, like, they don't, of course, go. Tolkien doesn't go into detail in the, in the books itself about Aragorn's reign, but it's clear. He leaves the Shire alone and he doesn't go. He's not like sending representatives to say, okay, the bureaucrats, okay, go manage the Shire for me. He leaves it alone and he leaves Rohan alone even. I mean, I know technically Rohan's a kingdom as well, but as, as kind of king of Gondor, he could try to, you know, take over Rohan as well and manage that and, and the Dwarf kingdom and all, all that stuff. So yeah, so clearly it's a subsidiary and solidarity that's combined that you see in tokens. Now I want to now completely change gears. I want to talk about the movies, because the Peter Jackson movies, of course, 25th anniversary. I couldn't believe when they says 25th anniversary. I mean, I'm just getting old because it does not seem like that long ago that I watched him in our, in our family. I, I saw all three in the theaters. But then my kids, you know, they weren't really old enough. So we always, we have a very strict rule. You don't watch a movie if you haven't read the book. And so after they read the book and he has certain age, then they're allowed to watch the movies. And so. So I've watched him a number of times with. I have the extended version everything on dvd. So I first want to just ask, what is your general. Over. What's your general view of the movies? Good, bad and different. Pretty good. I mean, like, how would you say, how well did Peter Jackson do? I'm not talking about the Hobbit movies, which were an abomination, in my opinion. I'm talking about the Lord of the Rings movies. [00:39:55] Speaker A: Yeah. So the best way I can answer that is, is to. Is to give a little story. So when the first Peter Jackson films came out, I think it might just been the first one even. But when the films were coming out and they were fresh, we had Ave Maria College, as it then was, became RV Maria University in Michigan. We had a trial of Peter Jackson for the desecration of the Lord of the Rings, and that a colleague of mine on a literature faculty argued for the prosecution that Tolkien was guilty as charged. Desecrating the Lord of the Rings. Peter. Peter Jackson. Sorry, what did I say? [00:40:36] Speaker B: You said Tolkien. [00:40:37] Speaker A: Sorry. Yeah, Peter. Sorry. Peter Jackson for desecrating the Lord of the Rings. I acted as a defense attorney. So my, I was defending him, say, no, he did not desecrate the Lord of the Rings. We repeated it, by the way, at Franciscan University in, In Steubenville. And then when we did it, same same colleague of mine doing the prosecution and I do the defense, but there was. There were 12 undergraduates dressed as hobbits with hairy feet that they could focus. And so, no, I, I. My overall view, obviously, I could put my purest hat on and find out things wrong with it as long as my arm, if I want to be pedantic. Right. But taking the things as a whole, first of all, my initial response was, was of great relief because I expected desecration and was greatly relieved when I didn't experience it. Jackson, I think, had little option. It was a very ambitious project. Right. The extended versions, kind of, what, 11 or 12 hours, very expensive, you know, superstar actors, filmed on location in New Zealand. It was. He had to raise an awful lot of money, and then he had to market the product. So very cleverly and very wisely and shrewdly, he courted the worldwide global Tolkien community. He got them on board, he got them all excited. But that also meant, of course, that he had to keep them on his side. So he, he was not going to do anything that was going to completely and utterly offend and alienate especially is, you know, if no one turned up to watch the second film because the first one was so bad. So, you know, so he sort of almost had to, for purely utilitarian reasons behave himself, should we say. And so it keeps fairly close. I mean obviously there are things in it that they're not right, but he keeps fairly close to the story. He honors the integrity of, of the heroism and the self sacrifice. His, the, the depiction of the Shire at the beginning of the first film is, is marvelous. So I could comment about, about the good things about it, but of course with the Hobbit we won't talk about it beyond this. You know, the irony is that Peter Jackson didn't need that those people anymore, the Tolkien world, because he could ride the wave that the Lord of the Rings had created life because of them, ignore them. And what is really ironic, so the jokes on Jackson is that he was suffering from the dragon sickness, he'd become smog because what he wanted was the money and the power, which is why he turned what could have been a very good three hour film right into three mega epics that he's hoping to make loads of money. And he did. Unfortunately not as much perhaps as he hoped. So he got the dragon sickness and he brought maybe. I've watched the first one, it was horrible. Someone told me the second one was worse. I didn't even bother to watch it. That's where I am. [00:43:35] Speaker B: I was the same thing. I did the same thing. [00:43:38] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I mean for me they get an 8 out of 10 and when I watch them, you know, I'm never disappointed. I think these are great classic films and one of a relatively rare occasion where a good, a great work of literature is actually adapted to the screen in a way that doesn't desecrate it. [00:43:58] Speaker B: I think it's the last movie we're going to have Hollywood produce that is like that. Because you've seen over the past 10, 15 years how Hollywood's purpose is to desecrate tradition and figures. I mean Rings of Power is just an abomination. I haven't watched any of it, but I just know that we had Ben Reinhold on and you know, he talked about that and so it just, it's beautiful that happened. I feel like it could. It just everything came together for it to happen like it did. I think if it had been done too much earlier, it wouldn't have been as good as production because it wouldn't have the technology and everything to do it. If it come later, it would have included Been a Rings of Power type of thing. That would just been awful. I thought that I liked it. I'm with you. I love the movies. When I go into any movie that's based on a book I've read that I enjoy, I always recognize the book is not a movie script. And so you can't be too dogmatic of it has to follow the book exactly because the book wasn't written as a movie, it was written as a book. And they're different genres so you don't want to do the same thing. And I thought though, like some of the characters I thought were great, like they really made them like I. I love Sam in the movies, I love Sam in the book. But I thought Sean A Aston. I think Sean Austin, how you pronounce his last name. I thought he did a great job. You really get the nobility, the simple nobility of Sam, I think comes across very well in the movies. I mean, it's like when Sam picks up, you know, Frodo to carry him in, he says, I'm not gonna. I can't carry the ring, but I can carry you. I don't think there's a man who watches that who doesn't get tear up a little bit. I mean, I don't know how you could watch that, not be like just completely inspired. I will say though, and I'm not to nitpick, but I do think what I was probably most disappointed in the movies of, aside from some admissions, was Aragorn. I did feel like the Hollywood kind of cultural view of somebody can't be a. A total hero. Like they have to have some. You have to make them always weak and self question. Like you can't just have a figure who's like, you know, truly a hero. And I feel like they diminished him a bit in, in the movies from where he was in the book. Did you think that as well, or am I kind of reaching? [00:46:19] Speaker A: No. I remember writing at the time, when I wrote reviews of the films when they first came out, that very similar to what you just said. I said that Aragon is like a weird hybrid of Jesus Christ and James Dean. You probably have to be my age to know who James Dean is. But of course he Rebel Without a Cause. This sort of juvenile delinquent who, you know, rebel Without a cause. I mean the title speaks of itself. And so there's the conflicted character who wasn't ready the man up to. To his role as the true king. But there's also, I mean, he looked a bit like Christ. And I was pleased about that. And I tend to, I don't know why this is, but I tend to not be as alienated from, from Jackson's depiction of Aragon on re watching it. I know my initial reaction was, was. Was certainly that same as yours, but maybe I've just acclimatized myself to the Jackson Aragon now. I don't know. But you are right completely about reading, reading a work of literature first. Because the key thing about this is that if you read the book first, you could test the adaptation from your own experience of reading the work. If you haven't, then when you do read the work, you're going to see Ian McKellen as Gandalf. You're going to. Yeah, you're going to, you're going to see that the various actors in the roles because your imagination has been gate crashed and there's nothing you can do about it. The purity of it's gone. So if you read it first, then you are in control of seeing the adaptation. If you're doing it the other way around, the adaptation is in control of you reading the book. And, and you, if it's great work, literally do that. And the one, one other thing I would say, by the way, and I agree with you basically, but one exception to a great work of literature being made in the great film adaptation by the producers and directors following the story, as far as I can remember precisely, essentially is the, the, the. [00:48:21] Speaker B: The night. [00:48:21] Speaker A: Early 1980s British adaptation of Brights They Visited. And if you know people, again, read the book first. But once you've read the book first and you can test it, I mean again, this is a novel that's only about a third of the length of the Lord of the Rings. It's not a particularly long novel and it's about a 10 hour, 10 or 11 hour adaptation. So that's the other, that's the other challenge, of course, right. If you're going to be really faithful to the whole plot. Plot, even if you can do it without violating medium of film, which is, as you rightly say, is different. But even if he can, right, it's going to cost a huge amount of money because even a relatively slim novel takes 10 or 11 hours of filming. So it's not going to happen very often because that sort of money is not going to be available very often. [00:49:07] Speaker B: Yeah. And that kind of brings up the, probably the two biggest omissions that people complain about and that's Tom Bombadil and Scouring of the Shire. And both of those we both, we know they're very important to the story. They're not auxiliary yet. I personally, I understood both, I understood why both were left out. I mean like you said, the extended version is already close to 12 hours for the three movies. There's only so much money in the world and it just, you know, I, I, I, at least I, I forgave him for that. I didn't think that was a, a great sin. But I know some people are very upset that those two, two sections were left out. [00:49:45] Speaker A: I am completely with you. I, I, I for two reasons apart from the reasons you've already given that additional reasons. One is I don't think Tom Bombadil could be trans translated to the film medium without losing a great deal of his mystique and his enigma. There's a whole chapter in my book Frodo's Journey on the the Enigma of Tom Bombadil. He's very important. The first thing that Gandaff does following the strikes of the Ring is I'm going to go and have a long talk with Tom Bombadil. So he's very important but he has a gravitas which is, which is inseparable from a mystique and that when he [00:50:22] Speaker B: come across like a court gesture almost in a movie he that could very much happen. [00:50:26] Speaker A: Exactly. You come across some sort of comic figure. Right. And like, like the desecration of Radagast in the, in the, in the first and orbit horrible. He's basically a hippie smoking pot. I mean, you know, it's just, it's just. But yeah, so I agree with you. Tom Bombady I don't think could have been done well. So I think Peter Jackson saw that said well we just leave him aside and I think that was a correct decision artistically for the perspective of the film. Doesn't mean he's not important. In fact crucial to the book scan the sh saying that there's. You mentioned it limited resources as regards budget but there's also limited attention span as regards audience. You know and we've had the climactic moment on Mount Doom and then, and then you know, the duum one following that. I do think there's a little element of truncation at the end with too many things are brought together bit too quickly. But you couldn't put in the scouring the Shire. You'd either have to mess it up by only giving it five minutes in which case you better leave it out or give it the full sort of 45 minutes it needed which would not be practical that expect the film to go for another hour and a half after the destruction of the Ring. So again, in both those cases, I think artistically, from the perspective of filmmaking, they were the correct decisions. But again, and to reiterate, both the Scouring of the Shire as a chapter and Tom Bombadil as a character are crucial to the book. [00:51:56] Speaker B: Yeah, I felt like when you read a book like Lord of the Rings, even after the Rings destroyed, you don't want it to end. You want to just keep reading. And so Scouring a Shower is wonderful, has meaning to it, of course. But like, just like I know every single time I've ever finished the trilogy, when I finished when, when Sam says, I guess we're home, or I. Whatever the quote is at the end, I guess I'm home. And I. Every single time, I'm like, sad because it's over. But a movie, when the climax happens and the ring is destroyed, I think even a lot of people were a little bit like, let's get it over with Peter Jackson, because he has these multiple endings in the movie, which I appreciate he wanted to include at least some of it. But I do think, like, your brain just in the movies, like, okay, the climax has happened, now let's just wrap it up and let's go home. Whereas you don't want to do that necessarily in a book. You want to just keep reading. [00:52:48] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think one of the reasons, first of all, is a film, even a long film, is you say 10 or 11 hours, a lot of it is going to take a lot longer than that to read. And the engagement of the reader is a. It's a proactive engagement. The engagement of the viewer of a film is very much passive. You know, you're. You're letting it happen to you. You're not sort of involving your imagination, having to make pictures from the words you're reading. You're having it all done for you. Right? So at some point you've had your thrill, you're now ready for it to be over. The experience is done. And if the experience is not done because it's continuing, at that point you begin to get frustrated. So again, we do have to be very aware of the two different media, know literature and. And film and. And clearly, you know, there's a wonderful line from. From T.S. eliot that I find myself quoting all the time from his poem, the Hollow Men. Between the potency and existence falls the shadow. So we can talk about that Platonically and get philosophical. But. But the key thing for me, this is very true of Translation. Right. So between the potency of the original and the existence of a translation, a shadow fall. And that's obviously true of translating a work of literature from one language to another language, but it's also true of translating a work literature to another medium. Right. So clearly a shadow is going to fall and we have to accept and embrace that. You're not going to have the purity and the pristine brilliance of the original. Once you are translating it in some way, the shadow will fall. [00:54:22] Speaker B: Okay, final question about the movies is what is your favorite scene from the movies? Not necessarily would be from the books. And I'll just say mine to start off is the battle. Helm's deep. I just thought that was a wonderful. Probably the best battle scene I've ever seen in movies. And I love it. I know a lot of people would say that's theirs. What would be your favorite scene from the movies? [00:54:42] Speaker A: Wow, that's a great question. I probably going to just say that I love my favorite part is probably still just the. After the bit about Smaggle and. And discover the Ring, this the. The prologue, if you like, when Peter Jackson takes us into the Shire for the first time as I really feel he brought that to life. And the Shire in some sense is the heart of the story. And I think he did a really good job of bringing that to life. So I just love when he takes us to the Shire for the first time and you're seeing, you know, the green fields and the hobbit holes and the hobbits and the smoke coming from the chimneys and I mean, it was just good. [00:55:30] Speaker B: You want to live there. I mean, that's the great thing about the movies was how you pictured it in your mind is on the same wavelength as how he depicted it in the movies and all. In most cases, at least for me, in most cases it's not going to be exact because it shouldn't be exact. We're all going to have a different image in our minds. But it was enough, it was close enough that when I read the. When I read the books again, I don't picture the movie. I don't picture Ian McCullen as Gandalf. But that helps me in my own picture of Gandalf when I'm reading. And I think that shows how good the movies were and that they didn't replace or like, you know, denigrate or downplay my own image in my own mind of these characters. So yeah, so the Shire is just so well done. So okay, so I want to wrap it up here now. You are doing everything. It feels like I've got these books by you, they're sitting on my shelves that I'm reading. I got my daughter taking a class from you. You're writing for Crisis. Every time I talk to you you talk about like you're, you're traveling, doing this stuff. So I want to know how can everybody find out like everything that you're, you have your, your hands in. I feel like it's almost everything. So is there a one stop shop in other words that we can find out all things Joseph Pierce? [00:56:40] Speaker A: Oh yes, absolutely. The best one stop place for all that I do is my personal website. That's jpierce co j p e a r c e.co not.com and there you know you have my blog anything I I that's published by Crisis. For instance my Fortnite article Crisis would end up within a day or so on my personal website. So you know, people want to just see what I'm doing in all media. So this will be on there when you post me the link. It'll be on my website. So you know everything's going to be there. So jpce co is the place to go. [00:57:12] Speaker B: Okay, I'll make sure I definitely link that in the show notes and don't you have and I apologize for forgetting the details. Don't you all I know like my, my daughter, her classes she's taking from you is Homeschool connections. It's a recorded class. But don't you offer though direct some direct classes as well like that you do live. Are you, are you still doing that? Is that your website? [00:57:31] Speaker A: Oh I am absolutely. I, I teach six courses a year for them. Two and two in the fall, two in the spring, two in the summer. I've just finished teaching a course on the, on the the Oedipus cycle, the three theme plays of Sophocles. And next week I begin another course on Much Ado About Nothing by Shakespeare. So yeah again if you find out that from my, from my website and my, my inner sanctum, my subscribe section. Yeah everything I'm doing, that's the place to find out. [00:57:59] Speaker B: Is it mostly homeschooling students who take your classes or adults who want continuing education? Like who's taking these classes with homeschool connections? [00:58:07] Speaker A: The live classes have to be homeschoolers, not grown ups. But the recorded classes, once they're going into recorded classes, anybody can take. [00:58:16] Speaker B: Okay, so your live classes are also through homeschool connections. [00:58:19] Speaker A: Yes, I teach at Rosary College. Teach Memorial College. So I teach other classes online live, but homeschool connections is. Is there is. Is a yes. I've been doing for probably at least 10 years. [00:58:32] Speaker B: Okay. But everything. Anything we want to know about class you teach, just go to jpierce co and then. And we'll find. Like I said, I'll link that in show notes so people just click on it. So. [00:58:41] Speaker A: Well, thank you. [00:58:42] Speaker B: I. I love to get geeked out about Lord of the Rings, so it was great chatting with you about that. And yeah, I think I'm gonna have to watch the movies again now that I've read. I'm reading. I'm. We're. We're just about what just happened. We just left Loran. Yeah. And we're. And they're going down the river and so. And they're. They're still on the river right now. That's where we are. So. [00:59:04] Speaker A: Well, I look directly ahead of me there on top of the bookshelves, there are all three box sets of the three Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings films. And I. I'm overdue for watching them myself, so I, I. You probably wet my appetite sufficiently. I'm gonna have to go back and watch them. [00:59:20] Speaker B: Very good. Sounds good. Well, thank you, Joseph, again for coming on the program. [00:59:23] Speaker A: My pleasure. Thank you, Eric. God bless you. [00:59:26] Speaker B: Okay, everybody, until next time. God love you.